It took my three years to write my novel, two years to find my publisher, and another year working with Small Dogma to refine the final version. Most people and authors, including myself, think that I am done and the book sales will just happen. This couldn’t be further from reality. ‘Decisions’ was published earlier this year and I quickly learned that I need to treat this as the beginning versus the end of my involvement with selling my book. As a first time author with a smaller publisher, I have put together a plan to increase the sales of my novel. This plan starts with the obvious of family and friends; grows to include cold calling books stores, newspapers, blogs, etc; then to the more sophisticate process of setting up google keywords; and the time consuming commitment of writing my own blog. Below is my high-level marketing plan:

As you can see there is a lot to promoting your book. You need to work hard to promote your book then have patience and dedication because the process takes time. It takes time for people to read your book and recommend to others. After requesting a copy of my novel, it took a blog a full six months to finally blog a positive review of Decisions. Verses get frustrated take that energy to work even harder to increase your book sales. If you have any questions, comments, or recommendations on this post, promoting books, or on my novel, please contact me at shaun@closerq.com.

In writing your novel, the first thing that I like to do besides an outline, is make a list of characters, including names, color of hair, height, and even personality. Already knowing the genre should help you prepare for this. With your main character or characters, you already should have a good idea on how they will fit within the novel. Whether they are intense or funny, their special quirks you want them to have helps in the making of these characters. As far as myself, I always want my main characters to stand out the most so I give them the characteristics that help not only enhance the story, but helps the reader to relate to them better and when doing so, will help the reader to associate the main characters with the story that they are reading.

As far as the secondary characters, which is something that I personally had to really think about when writing; there are several ways of making them stand out. Whether it is the way they talk, the way they walk, or even the way they might act around other people, again, depending on the genre you are writing. One of the things that I consider very important when a writer takes these characters and the specific characteristics of these secondary characters is to put yourself into the mind, or some writers may say the meat of that character. If you were he or she, what about that character you are writing about, would make him stand out to the reader. If he is a bad man or woman, bring out the darkness of the character to the reader. His actions, his clothes, his mannerisms are all things that can bring this quality out for the reader to remember and wrap their minds around while enjoying your novel.